TOWARDS A SUCCESSFUL BI IMPLEMENTATION
Part 2: What companies should do to extract maximum benefits from their BI implementation?
A BI system implementation should aim at getting an accurate picture of the current performance of the enterprise. The BI system should be capable of responding to changes in the market. It should be able to integrate financial consolidation with the operational performance. Basically, a BI system should be able to guide the enterprise in the right direction after deriving insights from the current data that is fed into the system.
1. The company should know why they need a BI system and the expectations from the same. For e.g. the goal can be centralization of key business process or getting a 360 degree view of the global customer base.
2. The company should ensure that the senior management and the other essential stakeholders across processes are involved in the decision making and understand the goal. All the stakeholders should be on the same page and should be committed to working towards the mission of taking the BI system implementation successfully towards it goal. All the stakeholders should be given the BI training specially designed for the stakeholders. Without this a company can be sure that it will never reach its goal set to be achieved through the BI implementation.
3. Hire a BI consultant with proper knowledge of the domain. This consultant will study the current landscape of the systems and advice an approach that will help the company reach its goal. The initial study done by the consultant should be able to generate the following output:
a. Conduct a cause and effect analysis to develop business process models to evaluate the decision alternatives and identify the KPIs that will meet the business needs
b. Draw the requirements of the BI system that is aligned with the goals of the implementation. The BI consultant should come up with the requirements of the system after discussions with the stakeholders and understanding the goal.
c. A conceptual view of the various sources, single version of truth (data warehouse) and the final BI system
i. Clear understanding of the ‘as is’ and ‘to be’ model
d. The BI product that will fit the needs of the organization
e. A roadmap showing the implementation path to reach the final goal. If the sources are high in number the company can adopt a phased approach. The roadmap should be able to depict the evolution of a full fledged BI system that will touch upon almost every area of the business to achieve the final goal.
f. The requirements can be floated as an RFP or given to the preferred Systems Integrator for the implementation.
i. Choosing the right System Integrator or vendor should be one of the tasks for the BI consultant. The right vendor choice will go a very ling way in determining the success of the BI implementation and whether the implementation will help the company in meeting the goals.
The success of any BI implementation will depend on having the BI consultant work with the Systems Integrator till the implementation is over. The stakeholders from the company along with the BI consultant should work closely with the vendor to ensure that the BI application functionality is rightly aligned to the business goals. The stakeholders should also have a very good understanding of the ROI that can be generated out of this initiative and this should be revisited and checked regularly. Last but not the least the whole program should have a clear governance structure defined in place that will ensure proper planning, risks and their mitigation, definition of roles and responsibilities and overall management of the program.
